The Man in Love with You
by daywalkr82
Summary: My own deleted scene from "Chuck vs. The Other Guy." Sarah reflects on and contemplates her feelings for Chuck and comes to a momentous decision. Rated T for one curse.


**A/N: This takes places as Sarah is driving to Chuck's place in "Chuck vs. the Other Guy" to tell him about Shaw's plan for the Ring Director. I'd also like to apologize for the site messing with my formatting.  
**

Sarah Walker was a torn individual. Here she was driving towards Chuck's place at breakneck speed, and she wasn't sure why. Yes, she needed to tell him that Shaw had found the Ring's local headquarters, but there was more to it than that. She had always been the best example of a CIA agent that she could be. Never once, even with Bryce, had she let her feelings interfere with her mission. Every seduction was a means to her desired end. Every make-out session with Bryce had been for a distraction. Guards never suspect a couple in love, after all. But with Chuck, there had been something different from the start. She could remember getting the specs for the subversion as she walked into the Buy More.

"_Target's name is Charles Irving Bartowski. 6' 4", messy brown hair._ _Our records show Larkin sent him the Intersect. You know what to do, Agent Walker." _

"_Should be simple," Sarah said into her com with a predatory gleam in her azure eyes. She had seduced far tougher targets than this simpleton. 28 years old, still working at a Buy More in Burbank, CA, kicked out of Stanford. Yep, this would be like taking candy from an extremely tall baby. She dropped her knowing, sarcastic smile and in its place adopted one of sincerity and grace as she walked to the Nerd Herd desk in the center of the store._

That had been two and a half years ago, and in that span, she had come to actually care for Chuck beyond his capacity with the Intersect. Casey often poked fun at her feelings for Chuck, but it was not as if she tried to fall for the guy. She had tried to keep her feelings separate from her work – Carina would say it was Sarah's defining characteristic – but Chuck had this innocence about him that no other mark had had. And he was innocent; when you praised him, you could tell he was on top of the world. When you were pissed at him for not staying in the car like you told him to an nth number of times, he got this wounded puppy look that shot right past the stern agent you were supposed to be and made you feel like a heel for yelling at him. After all, he hadn't been trained like she or Casey had. And when she had lied to him about killing Mauser, she thought she had been doing the right thing. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him, but he did know, and that betrayal of trust was all he needed to backslide to where he was when they first met. She had realized then, as she should have when they were dancing at that club during their "first date" that Chuck was not like anybody else she had ever met, and she vowed, silently to herself and vocally to Chuck, that she would never let anyone hurt him. It WAS her job, but like he said at the motel, it was something personal to her, as well.

Thinking about the motel as she passed the next mile marker made her think about the other part of her feelings for Chuck. She relived their kiss in front of Bryce's pod-thing. Operating under the assumption that said pod was actually a huge bomb, she had raced off to defuse it, with Chuck following behind. She had told him to run, but as usual, he wouldn't listen. He made the argument that the Intersect would help, but all she was thinking about was getting him and the Intersect to safety. Better she should die than him. When it became obvious that he wouldn't leave, she had pulled her gun on him. It was a stupid move, and he had said so, but she couldn't think of what else to do to make him see the imminent threat at hand. Finally, with less than ten seconds left, Chuck had closed his eyes to wait for the inevitable end. She couldn't explain why she had done what she had done. Maybe it was that old saying about not knowing what one had until one had lost it, and she was about to lose him, with him not knowing how she felt. Maybe it was the jealousy of watching him with Lou, and wishing she was in Lou's place. And then she was kissing him, and after a beat, he was kissing her back with equal passion, and it felt like nothing else, because she had never kissed someone like that. She had never kissed someone like that and meant it.

She thought about the aftermath of their first kiss, how she had buried her feelings under a mountain of professionalism, how she thought she could still be an agent, despite what happened, how she had almost lost him again to Longshore, and how she reacted to his willingness to leave. She had almost cried, and probably would have, even with Chuck trying to get her to smile, if it hadn't been for the Fulcrum agent/pita delivery girl trying to kill them. She flashed on the more recent moments of their "fake" relationship, the bracelet Chuck had given her on Christmas Eve, which she now wore almost constantly, though she had forgotten it today in her hurry to hear Shaw's plan, their faux-marriage and how good it had felt to call herself Mrs. Carmichael, their time at the motel while AWOL. She blushed as she remembered THAT moment the next morning, felt her heart flutter when Chuck had agreed to meet her in Prague, felt it sink when she remembered him turning her down, and felt it return as she thought about what he had said a few days ago:

"_Look, I don't want to pester you, Sarah. Or become some… some nuisance you can't avoid. I've seen Morgan go that route far too many times to count. And since I've already given the fancy, eloquent version of this speech before, I'm just gonna be blunt and honest: I love you... One more time, because it feels really nice to say, I love you. I feel like I've been bottling this up forever. I love you."_

She had heard everything else, but those three words were all that mattered. She had been thinking about them ever since they got back from the mission yesterday. She couldn't stop thinking about them. She needed something to take her mind off what Chuck had said, so she tuned in the first station she found on her radio. She had never been big on any kind of music – spies didn't have time for music and iPods and playlists – but the station at least played something calm, something the DJ called "The Man in Love with You," by an artist named George Strait.

_I'm not the Hero who'll always save the day_

_Won't always wear the White Hat_

_Won't always know the way_

_I may not even be the dream you wanted to come true_

_But I'll always be the man in love with you_

"Great," Sarah said to no one in particular. "Just what I don't need, a song that reminds me of Chuck." But something was keeping her from changing the station.

_I'm not the Key that opens every door_

_I don't have the power _

_To give you all you want and more_

_But when you're needing something special_

_You can hold on to_

_I'll always be the man in love with you_

The music took a step up, and so did Sarah's heart rate. The song seemed to speak to Chuck's innate Chuck-ness, how he could screw up and still save her and Casey on a regular basis, how he could make her smile even when she couldn't find anything to smile about, how he was routinely clueless about what made a good field agent… and how she was glad he didn't make a good field agent.

_I never could work miracles_

_There may be others_

_Who can do what I can't do_

_But no one else could be_

_As good as me_

_At loving you_

She felt a wetness on her cheeks. She was actually crying, and ruining her mascara in the process. She dabbed at her eyes, wiping away the mess and tears.

_So when the world won't turn_

_The way you wish it would_

_And the dreams you have don't come alive_

_As often as they should_

_Remember that there's someone there_

_Whose heart is always true_

_I'll always be the man in love with you_

_Remember that there's someone there_

_Whose heart is always true_

_Someone there to help you make it through_

_I'll always be the man in love with you_

Sarah punched the power button on the radio a little harder than was perhaps necessary, but it was the stupid station's fault for playing such a dumb song. She hadn't noticed while it was playing, but she had arrived in Chuck and Ellie's apartment complex. She couldn't help thinking about him now, and how the song had seemed to sum up everything he was to her. Yes, he was still a screw-up, even as a fully-qualified agent, with an aversion to guns, hurting people, and other men pawing on her. In short, he was everything an agent should not be, but that was what she loved about him. He was hers, goddamn it, and she was going to let him know how she felt right now. She checked to see she had gotten rid of any trace of tears, got out of her car, and walked into the strangest scene she had yet to witness as Chuck's partner: Morgan tied up with video game controllers, and Chuck in his underwear, holding a plastic guitar with what looked like an empty bottle of whiskey next to him on the floor.

"What is happening?" She asked, concern etching her previously tear-streaked face as she walked over to cut Morgan free.

"Hey, Sarah," Morgan said from his prone position on the floor. "Chuck's in a… a bit of a low spot."

"Yeah," she said in disbelief as she pulled a pocketknife from one of the cups in her bra. "Yeah, I can see that."


End file.
